Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Getting Motivated


There are many perks to having a flexible schedule. I have my own business. I do not have to be at work at any time. Nobody will yell at me if I don't do what I should. I basically have no rules around my work schedule. Except for the ones I make for myself. And then I change them, or break the rules. Have such flexibility is hard. It is up to me and me alone to make things happen. Sometimes I find this difficult. It's like wanting to work out but never actually making it to the gym. This is how it is for me in many aspects of my life. Housework, exercising, working. all these things are up to me. I'm working on being more disciplined with these things. I have Ella in daycare two mornings a week for work time. But I go to the coffeeshop, I check my email, I write a post for my blog. You get the idea. I've been getting away with doing things as needed and not having total discipline. But we're getting to the really busy season for our work. I need to get really organized now in order to make it through the summer. So I entered everything into quickbooks this morning. This afternoon while Ella is napping (we hope) I will work on setting up the home office. And then things should be really easy. No excuses...

Let me just tell you all that I am grateful to have my own business. I love it, it's just also a lot of hard work. Hard work that is also somewhat easy to put off.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Bloggity blog

I've been reading a lot more blogs lately. My husband will often make fun of me. He doesn't understand. "Why would you read about people you don't know?". I find it hard to explain it to him. When I try I feel self conscious, maybe he's right? When you put it that way it does seem wierd.

Today I was going through my google reader. I was noticing the different types of blogs I read. Design blogs, home renovation blogs, food blogs, fashion blogs and of course, mostly mommy blogs. So many of my different interests I have blogs I like to read. It's great. And within the mommy blogs i have a handful of blogs where the moms remind me of myself. I find comfort in that. There's comfort in the fact that someone else is like me. Someone else is trying to do it all and learning to live with the fact that they can't. Someone is forgetful, not the perfect mom, not always cooking a great dinner. I like to hear that stuff. And recently I got into some other blogs, with parents who I am not like at all. I'm reading a blog by a homeschooler, a topic I find fascinating but that I would never actually do. A few of the blogs I read the parents are religious and it's nice to see that perspective even though we are not religious people. I love reading about what other parents are doing.

So there you go... Even when I am having a hard time for some reasons these blogs give me comfort. At a time when I might feel like I can't talk to my "real" friends about something, I can comment on a blog about something. Or write a post about something for all of the internet to read. So I read blogs to gain some new information, see how other people are doing things and to find comfort in the ways that I am choosing to do things.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Seriously?

 
Posted by Picasa

Memories

 


Just found this old picture of Samantha. So cute... She used to love tutus and crocs.
Posted by Picasa

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

What If It Were You Sitting Up On the Wall...

...if it were you in the sandwich, you wouldn't be laughing at all.

I can't help it. I love that McDonalds commercial. I find it hilarious. I have to admit that once (or twice) I looked up the commercial on youtube just for a laugh. And then I made my daughter watch it too. She gets it. We have a similar sense of humor, you know.

These days, I'll take those silly laughs anywhere I can get it. They're few and far between. So if I'm laughing out loud for some stupid reason and at a Mcdonalds commercial, I'll take it and I'll watch it again.

I have never gone to therapy. As a former social worker I am not against it at all. I see the things it can do for people. There's a group near me, I don't remember what it's called. It's basically a group therapy. It's about taking the time for yourself. I was considering doing it and then my husband said it was crazy. He said, you don't need therapy, you just need to manage your time better. But it wasn't really just about the therapy, it was about once a week this is my thing that I'm doing, just for me. I'm not trying to work while taking care of the kids, trying to clean the house and exercise while doing other things. 2 hours once a week i just focus on trying to make myself a better person, and on feeling good about my day to day experiences. Lately I feel like I'm not totally present. I am often doing more than one thing at a time and while I'm doing it, I have other things on my mind. I want to teach myself to live in the moment again and to be able to turn off the other stuff and focus on the task at hand. That could be playing with the kids, exercising, cleaning or working. I just want to be more present, I think I could be more fulfilled that way. Maybe this group could help with that, maybe not but it's worth a shot, right?

(In other news, I'm also quite fond of the new Kia commercial with the sock monkey and moono from Yo Gabba Gabba.)

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

A Few of My Favorite Things

Finding a lost shoe

Sleeping in (until 9 AM!)

Staying Up Late Because You can't Put the Book Down

Chocolate Molten Cake

The Feeling After Exercising

A Walk on a Brisk Fall Day

Watching my Children play Together

Hearing Kids Conversations

Finding a Great Babysitter

A Busy Restaurant

A nice Red Wine

My Laptop (even though I wish it was a Mac)

Good Friends

Feeling Confident

Little girls in coordinating outfits

New Shoes

Being on time to school, dance, etc.

Not forgetting about half days or my turn to bring snack

Monday, March 15, 2010

I have to work on being productive. I have closets to organize and some boxes still to put away. However, I'm sitting here going through my google reader and then decided to post to my blog. Last night I made a list of the things I want to accomplish today. Let's see how I do. Blogging wasn't written on the list, but it was in my head. So hurray for me, I did something! I also have to organize my bedroom closet, mail the tax forms and exercise. Hmm.. I wonder which will be the last on my list to be done. So I'm actually not being that ambitious today, which is nice. The house is generally quite clean, not perfect by any means, but we're not perfectionists over here.

When I had my last blog I emailed all family and good friends about my blog. I was doing it mostly to post pictures of my daughter and let people know what was going on with her. With this blog, I have told nobody. The only person I told is my husband. I feel like this blog is more for me. I don't need people to read it (although I wouldn't mind) and I certainly don't need all family and friends to read it. I know a few people are reading it, I'm not sure if it's family who somehow found it or other people whose blogs that I've commented on (more likely, I think). Anyway, it actually feels good to be doing it this way. I feel like I can say whatever I want. I'm not worried at all what people will think of me. It's liberating.

We had a nice weekend. I worked Fri and Sat, we were busy, which is great. Our newish babysitter came with art stuff for the kids. How great is that? They love her. It's so great having a good babysitter again, we had issues with our last one. Family came over yesterday for dinner, which was nice. And today I'm watching my nephew for the day.

Closet, closet, I must go do the closet, I'm going to keep chanting it until I get myself up there, my nephew will probably be awake soon...

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

March resolutions

I have a few things I want to accomplish daily. This is in a ideal situation I am well aware of how unlikely it is that this will happen. But if I can swing 4 out of 5 it is a pretty good day. The ideal time frame is 45 min to 1 hour each.

I have had so much anxiety lately. I feel like in the effort to get so much done, I only half accomplish things and don't accomplish a lot too often. I have to get it together. I have 2 kids, a business, a family. I am going to try a new tactic where if I plan my days and try my best to stick to it, I will hopefully accomplish more. Also, I need to make working out more of a priority for me, a daily priority.
so here we go, the things I need to accomplish:

Working out: I have a tendency to work out to lose weight. I lose a few pounds and drop it completely. I know I feel tons better when I work out. So I'm going to go for 45 min a day, and just focus on that. I'm hoping it will help me to feel better all around. I'm trying to make it about my well being and not about a number on a scale.

Real Work: I am really working on trying to set things up so that's it easy to work from home. Now that we have a bigger house, this should be doable. I need to utilize morning, nighttime, naptimes... and I know I shouldn't admit this but... a 30 min tv show in the afternoon should be enough time for some billing or answering emails. I read about all these people who work from home, it must be possible for me to do it at least a little bit more than I do. I'm thinking if I devote some time daily instead of big chunks of time, I might not get as overwhelmed.

Organizing / Decluttering: Since we just moved I just want to keep this house really organized. We lived in a small space for several years and things were really chaotic and cluttered. I'm doing my best to straighten up several small times a day to avoid this from happening.

Walking: I'd like to walk with my children almost daily. This new spring weather is making me want to get out there and walk around. This will probably be the thing that I do the least consistently, but if I get out there with the stroller a few times a week that will be a good thing.

Cleaning: Pretty self explanatory. I'm the worst cleaner in the history of cleaning. I've tried many things in the past. have one cleaning day a week, have daily chores, this and that, whatever... I think I just have to take it one day at a time. Little things. New rule is to fold the clothes right out of the dryer. I am even so fancy that I have bins with our names on them, the clothes go in the bins, then up to the rooms. I am so proud of myself! Dishwasher is being emptied and dinner being cleaned up right after dinner (imagine that!?!) The biggest issue s for us are the toys and the dog. We now have a playroom and Samantha has been very good about doing for chores for allowance as long as we remind her, so this is a big help. And our dog, well our dog sheds more than I ever thought possible. We just have to do our best with this one. He is usually staying off the top floor of the house, so it's not too bad. By the way, have I mentioned how much I hate cleaning?

Monday, March 8, 2010


I took a beautiful picture of my daughter yesterday. We had such a great time at our new house playing outside. Strangely there was still snow on the ground but we were outside without coats on, climbing trees.

And I want a ipad. I'm on a mission to convince Tim that I should have one.

Night Out

Tim and I had a big night out this past weekend. It was thoroughly planned and not planned at all. Since I'm usually such a big planner it was sort of nice to kind of just "go with it" and not have it all planned out. All we knew was that we were meeting some old friends who we haven't seen in a year. As far as the logistics of getting there and childcare, that was obviously planned. I have never left Ella overnight. The last time I left Samantha I was pregnant with Ella. It was about 1 year and 20 months ago, July 2008. We had 2 babysitters coming. One during the day and one in the late afternoon to sleep over. I agonized for weeks over whether or not we should actually stay over. We didn't actually book the hotel until the night before we left.

There are many days when Ella still doesn't sleep through the night. So to leave her with someone overnight was creating a lot of anxiety and guilt for me. What if she wakes up? What is she wakes up and needs me? More importantly, what if the person watching her is really bothered by the fact that she wakes up? Tim reminds me, we are paying them, it comes with the package of agreeing to watch kids overnight. They might wake up...

So we compromised. We stayed over. But we took a 7:45 train back home. It seemed as though we should at least get to sleep in since we never do. But the anxiety and guilt got to me. I had to get back to my children. And honestly, waking up at 7 by choice was not so bad. Waking up without screaming children or children clawing at you to get up, is really nice, so nice in fact that I didn't mind so much what time it was. We'll get there, eventually we will sleep over somewhere and get to sleep in. Not just yet though. when you haven't been out of the house alone in so long I'll take what I can get.

And now to the night out without plans:
We got to NYC about noon. We walked around, met up with Tim's brother to have lunch in Chinatown. It wasn't my favorite, but it was nice to have something different that we don't often get anymore. Then we walked and walked. Went to the Moma store and bought gifts for the kids. Then we headed to the hotel to quickly change and meet our friends. At this point it was 4:30 (amazing how quickly time goes when you're alone and don't have much time). I wanted to savor every minute and make it last longer. We still didn't know where we were eating. This was amazing for several reasons number one, my husband is a chef, we used to live in NYC and he always knows where he wants to eat.

We eventually made it to the Hells Kitchen area. We found a cool beer garden where we got a drink. We got lucky and found a restaurant two doors down. We met our friends and had a really great dinner. It was so fun to reconnect and see the similarities in our lives even though we don't actually get to talk very often anymore. Unfortunately due to babysitter issues they had to leave after dinner. This left Tim and I trying to figure out how to spend the rest of our night. We started walking back towards our hotel.

This is when we made the night altering decision to see a movie. It sounded simple enough. We never get to see movies anymore. There was a huge theater right in front of us. What should we see? We are so out of the loop that we hadn't heard of many movies. So we picked the movie that was just starting. Precious.... Do you see where I'm going here? I heard of it once, a friend mentioned it was depressing but good. Ummm... not sure if that's how I would describe it. More like a "date night killer". I actually wound up walking out. I have never done this before. It was only 5 min from the end when I left. I found it so disturbing. And I don't get disturbed easily. If I was prepared for what the movie was about, it would have been different. But I wasn't. And it totally ruined my night.

Well we have a good 2 years before doing it again.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

On Sleep

Ella is a terrible sleeper.

She has never been a good sleeper. She woke up hourly until she was 9 months old. Many people told me to let her cry. I am a advocate of crying it out. I did it with my older daughter. It just would not work for Ella. She's tough. She does not give in. She has cried for hours.

She still does not nap. I put her in for naps, she screams for hours, then I get her. Finally I gave up putting her down for naps.

She is also a very light sleeper. Well, tonight Samantha woke her up. I went in rocked her, she was sound asleep and as soon as I put her down she started screaming. For about an hour... I think she might be asleep.

This is hard for me, I have mixed feelings. I hate letting my baby cry for so long. But if I don't, if I get her... she will be wide awake and will not go to sleep.

How do I fix this? How do we all have a sound night of sleep? I want to stop tiptoeing by my daughters room. I am always paranoid she will wake up and not go back to sleep. Suggestions anyone?

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

We moved...
my husband and I have spent the last 2 years staying in my parents basement. We finally have a place of our own. It is quite exciting for us.

In the last 2 years, many of my posessions (home decorating, furniture and kitchen items) have been in storage.

I unwrapped lots of them today. It was so nice, seeing things I haven't in so long. I actually forgot about some of it. I own a ice cream scoop that actually looks like ice cream and some really cool serving bowls I have probably only used a handful of times.
And in with the kitchen stuff 2 cd's: Ugly Kid Joe and John Lennon Milk & Honey.

Other big news, Tim and I now have a dishwasher! I have never had a dishwasher so this is quite a big deal. It is fancy and I love it. I'm in major nesting mode trying to get stuff in order. It is almost impossible to get organized after moving with 2 children. It is so hard to get stuff done. Tomorrow Ella has daycare until 12:30 and Samantha has school all day. I hope to be very productive.